HARRY'S STORY - PART II OF IV — Sharon Mark Cohen

Harry’s Story - Part II of IV

There’s more about Harry…follow along daily this week through Friday to read parts III and IV.

In March 1943, Harry met Anna (May 15, 1923-June 8, 2013), my father’s cousin. Anna’s mother Fruma was my paternal grandfather’s younger sister from a family of seven. For more on Anna’s family see my blog posts at sharonmarkcohen.com, Our Family Chain is Falling Apart, The Links Are Rolling Away, dated March 29, 2022, and How Could You? 😢 dated April 25, 2022.

(Scroll down-Part II of Harry’s Story is continued below).

Bottom paragraph: When Harry met Aniuta, aka Anna, at the home she shared with her sister Raya

Forever in my memory lives my Aunt Fannie’s comment that Cousin Anna and Harry were married by proxy. No one could tell the story of their meeting as well as Harry. I am fortunate to have much of his writing. Others are lucky that several of his pieces are easily accessible on the internet by clicking on: https://rethinkcinema.com/fairfax/stories/langsam.html#stryzyzow or putting the name Harry Langsam in the search engine. Note, for years we knew Cousins Anna and Harry as Anya and Haskel. (the H in Haskel is pronounced with the guttural Ch sound from the Hebrew letter Chet. As found on the internet: The eighth letter of the Hebrew alphabet is called "Chet" (rhymes with "met") and has the (light scraping) sound of "ch" as in "Bach").

In Harry’s words, “Deep in the forests of the Siberian wastelands, in a little enclave, I found my companion for life. In the darkest days of exile, I was fortunate to meet a girl named Anna with whom I fell madly in love. It wasn't an easy task to break through the barrier that divided the two of us in order to became one entity.

“I was a refugee from Poland, born in a small Hasidic shtetl and Anna, an evacuee from Kiev, [born and raised in Chudnov, Ukraine, she had gone to live with her sister in Kiev] was a product of Communist upbringing, constantly being told that everything Western is rotten and corrupt. Anna believed what she was told until she later found out that it was exactly the other way around.

'“Nevertheless, love is stronger than any ideology. Our friendship turned into courtship and love followed. Anna and I became inseparable, hoping never to be asunder; at least I thought so.

“When Kiev was liberated by the heroic Red Army, Anna was overcome with homesickness and insisted upon returning home, a home that in reality did not exist anymore. I wasn't strong enough to stop her.

“Being mobilized in the railroad industry, I couldn't join her, and was forced to succumb to a long-distance love affair with the hope that our separation would not last forever.

“And that's how our correspondence begun. The shortage of paper and a proper writing tool like a simple pen and ink or a pencil for that matter, couldn't prevent us from writing each other love letters at least once a week. Every letter that I received increased the spark of hope that we would soon be reunited, but in the meantime, a distance of at least five thousand kilometers separated the two lovebirds.

“I cherished every letter I received from Anna and read it several times. I saved them like a dear treasure. Unknowingly, my beloved did the same. My only solace during our separation was receiving letters from Anna.

“When the horrible war was about to end, good news reached the refugees: As soon as Poland was freed we would be repatriated back to our homeland. To be eligible for repatriation, Anna had to be married to a Polish citizen. I had managed to marry her by proxy by bribing a clerk, but to be repatriated, Anna had to physically be with me.

“In summary, Anna had no choice but pack up, leave Kiev, and return to Siberia. Among her meager belongings was a bundle of my love letters tied with a pink ribbon. Soon after her arrival, we decided to get married in a traditional way and in our treasure chest there was a pile of love letters, his and hers.”

To learn the fate of those letters in A LOVE STORY ABOUT LOVE LETTERS, visit https://rethinkcinema.com/fairfax/stories/langsam.html#stryzyzow.

In the ensuing decades, Anna and Harry escaped time and again from various countries, imprisoned along the way, until after the war when they were housed in a Displaced Person (DP) Camp in Germany. One of Harry’s prison stories, A Miracle Behind Bars, was published on December 5, 2002, in the Jewish Journal. I remember Harry telling me the miraculous story, which I saved among his impressive collection of pre-publication writings.

(Harry’s Story continues below the picture)

Their elder daughter Rema was born at the DP camp in 1947. In 1949, they arrived in Israel. By then, Anna was pregnant with their second child, Esther. Eight years later, in November 1957, Harry left for the states, and Anna followed with their daughters the following year. (See Good to Go Away, Good to Be Home, October 18, 2022, at sharonmarkcohen.com). I’ve added a tease with only one of the letters of more than 30 that Aunt Fannie saved from their correspondence over their years living in Israel. The one I chose shows a portion written by Harry and another by Anna.

1953 letter from cousins Harry and Anna when they lived in Israel

Be sure to check back tomorrow at sharonmarkcohen.com and click “blog” to read Part III of Harry’s Story.